Archive for November, 2012

The Student Committee of the Society for Applied Anthropology is pleased to announce our new student paper prize competition. The winner will work with the editor of Practicing Anthropology for eventual publication. More information here:

The Office of History and Archaeology (OHA) / State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO) is currently recruiting for two senior archaeologist (Archaeologist II) positions:

One position (PCN 10-5242) is responsible for day-to-day oversight and management of the OHA Integrated Business Suite (IBS), which includes the Alaska Heritage Resources Survey (AHRS) database, along with related data sets, maps and records. The position also plays a lead role in ongoing IBS re-design efforts, assists and trains IBS users, trains and monitors lower level staff, may occasionally serve as principal investigator for investigations, and participates in more general programs of OHA. This posting expires on November 29, but may be extended. For more information, contact Dave McMahan at 269-8723.

The other position (PCN 10-5262) will work in the OHA/SHPO Review/Compliance Unit as the Cultural Resource Liaison with the Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities (DOT&PF). The position will be the point of contact for DOT&PF Cultural Resource Management staff. Under the supervision of the Review/Compliance Unit lead, the position will review DOT&PF and FHWA projects for potential impacts to historic properties. The position will also provide technical and planning assistance to DOT&PF staff in early project planning, historic property identification efforts, and environmental public meetings. This posting expires on December 7. For more information, contact Judy Bittner at 269-8715 or Shina Duvall at 269-8720.

The Malawi Immersion Seminar is a three-week study abroad/field school addressing cultural, health, political, and ecological issues in Malawi, Africa using the anthropological method. The seminar provides students with an immersive and transformative summer experience offering them a chance to engage in an independent summer research project. The program will provide the necessary language and methodological training for meaningful and productive learning abroad.

Prior experience in anthropology is not required. The field school is appropriate for students from diverse disciplinary approaches. Undergraduate and graduate students from any university and in any major may apply. International students are also welcome.

Students will spend two weeks living and studying in a rural village with Malawian host families. Additional time will focus on language lessons, cultural training, as well as lectures in the areas of anthropology, history, public health, ecology, and wildlife. Students will travel to Liwonde National Park for a two-night safari to conclude the seminar during which they will present individual research projects and learn about the complex social-ecological system in the park.

Limited scholarships are available for undergraduate students.

Further detail and applications for this summer field school and scholarship can be found on the following link.

Ken Ames, Shelby Anderson, Doug Wilson, Sarah Sterling, and Don Shannon from Willamette Cultural Resources will be discussing Traditional Cultural Properties and Sacred Sites: how they are defined, managed, and how knowledge about them is shared.

Thursday, Nov 15 at 4:00pm
Cramer 141

We are inviting any interested students that want to learn more about this important topic come and be part of the conversation.

Do you know any students in your departments or campus programs who have leadership qualities or strong potential to become leaders at PSU? We need your help in identifying students to apply for scholarships to become peer mentors in the University Studies (UNST) Program!

The University Studies Peer Mentor Program is now accepting applications for students to become Peer Mentors for the 2013-2014 academic year. We are seeking academically successful, upper-division PSU undergraduate student or graduate students to apply for these excellent leadership and teaching opportunities.

Peer Mentors are a vital part of success in UNST Freshman (FRINQ) and Sophomore Inquiry (SINQ) courses. They collaborate with faculty and lead mentor sessions that support the curriculum. Mentors serve as colleagues and teachers, helping students learn the academic culture. They bridge faculty and students and help build positive, diverse, and supportive learning communities among students focusing on their success at PSU.

All applicants must have a 3.25 minimum GPA. Undergraduates who will have successfully completed 90 credits or more by September 2013 may apply to become Peer Mentors for Freshman Inquiry classes. Students enrolled in and admitted to graduate programs by September 2013 may apply to become Graduate Mentors for Sophomore Inquiry. All mentors receive a form of tuition remission and monetary remuneration.

Sitting at the crossroads between Europe and Asia, Transylvania (Romania) plays a fundamental role in the development of the European world. By its geographic location, it is situated on the main communication and technological axes in and out of Europe and, as a result, became a very dynamic zone of culture synthesis. At the same time, not only it has the largest salt concentration in Eastern and Southeastern Europe, but it also provides easy access to massive deposits of copper, tin, iron, gold and coal. Our programs invite students and volunteers to explore and excavate Roman Provincial society as it is impacted by the proximity of “imperial highways”, Late Iron Age Dacian life from the Burebista – Cesar prelude to conflict to the Dacian Wars, and finally, to experiment and experience life as a Daco-Roman. Furthermore, our participants can register to more than one project to expand their horizons in Iron Age and Classical archaeology, experimental archaeology, funerary archaeology, bioarchaeology and osteology.

Description: Our research area is situated between the richest gold deposits in Europe, the Dacian Kingdom’s political and religious capital and its fortified satellites in the Carpathian Mountains, and Sarmizegetusa Ulpia Traiana, the Roman capital of the Dacian provinces and the first Roman city North of the Danube, southwestern Transylvania was a highly integrated military, political, and economic region. During the Roman colonial occupation, 102-271AD, our target area around Simeria and Rapolt shows a very dynamic and intensive synthesis of Roman provincial life, where a multitude of processes of colonization and creolization take place side by side. Our project seeks to explore and understand the integration of all these structural provincial elements along the main Roman axes of communication and transport. Our excavations will aim at evaluating the importance and impact of the proximity of the main axis of movement, communication and commerce on the Roman provincial rural life, and its evolution through time.

Description: The area of the upper Olt River basin between Racos and Augustin, about 12 km in length (jud. Brasov, Romania), has yielded a very complex pattern of settlements, rivaling the Dacian Sarmizegetusa Regia capital complex. Military structures have been identified at Tipia Racosului and Tipia Augustinului. Several other settlements of various sizes have been surveyed on every hill top in the region. The most important feature of the area was the heavily fortified religious and military center of Augustin/Tipia Ormenisului. Our site of Piatra Detunata – Durduia (com. Racos, jud. Brasov, Romania) is situated approximately 4 km from the religious/military center from Augustin/Tipia Ormenisului. The LaTene site is composed by a series of fortified civilian settlements, in very close proximity to one another, spread over a complex and contrasted landscape. The importance of the site also lies in the fact that it was one of the very few that wasn’t evacuated as the Roman legions invaded Dacia in 102-106AD. We also uncovered several very rich Bronze Age votive shacks, pointing to the presence of a temple complex nearby, adding significant temporal depth to our understanding of the religious landscape.

Description: By the beginning of the first century AD, the Roman Empire reached its zenith. The synthesis between Dacia and Rome, from the conquest in 102/106 until the Aurelian retreat in 271/275, sustained the Roman Empire for another two centuries. Dacians are the people most immortalized in Roman imperial statuary. The Transylvanian gold has kept Roman economy out of bankruptcy at the same time as the Dacian auxiliaries have manned the Imperial armies to the point of having an emperor of Dacian origin, Maximinus Thrax. Our workshop brings together archaeologists, craftsmen and students in order to recreate actual objects found in excavations, using Late Iron Age and Imperial Roman techniques and technologies. At the same time, all our participants will experience life as a Daco-Roman, working the ovens and the forges, building Late Iron Age workshops and houses, training in the various weapons and tactical martial fighting techniques of the day. Students and participants will make the intellectual and phenomenological journey from the academic, to the experiment and to the experiential, in the fields of pyrotechnologies, domestic crafts, weapons and tactics, and finally prehistoric building techniques and architecture.

Description: As the 15th century ends, the southeastern European frontier collapses in front of the Ottoman Turks. With the collapse of the Kingdom of Hungary in 1526, its Transylvanian territories became a political battlefield between European and the Ottoman backed princes. The aim of this project is to evaluate how major global political events impact physically the local Transylvanian populations. For that purpose, we will analyze the human remains from four different cemeteries from central Transylvania (Romania), dating from the 16-17th centuries, in terms of advanced morphology and stable isotopes.

Description: As Europe redefines itself in the wake of the Ottoman invasion, the Carpathian frontier still holds fast against the Eastern invaders. The local populations lived under constant social, political, economic and religious stress. During the late Middle Ages, this region goes through major political changes, and a spiritual crisis, under the pressure of Islam from the East and Protestantism from the West. The main goal of this excavation is to understand the evolution of the population within this space-time environment, the changes in the very local type of church architecture and burial patterns through time, and the variations on the Christian burial ritual during social, political and economic stress. Through a more thorough study of the cemetery and its occupants, we will also explore the different processes that led to the penetration of Protestantism in the village and then its subsequent return to Catholicism. The further study of the human remains in our osteology laboratory will provide a more detailed view of the “lived” human aspects of these transitions.